Procedures

• Size represents frequency
• Thickness represents strength of association (lift)
• Black represents readmission probability of 1; White, 0

Motivation and Goals

• Predicting 30-day readmission on the basis of surgery/procedure characteristics
• Successfully identifying those diagnoses and procedures that can be targeted for quality improvement
• Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program adjusts payment using an “excess readmission ratio”
  
• By choosing the ideal conditions for each procedure, hospitals can increase payment from public insurance providers such as Medicaid and Medicare.

What we have

National Inpatient Sample

• Medicare data representing inpatient claims at the national level.
• About 350,000 records of inpatient visits paid by Medicare in 2012
• 5 to 10 diagnoses per inpatient record
  
• Demographic data such as age, race, income quartile of patient zip code

ACS NSQIP

• American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP)
  
• High-fidelity data, trained medical billing coders and clinicians ensure accuracy
  
• ACS NSQIP identifies more 30-day outcomes than do other quality programs
  
• Includes the years 2004 through 2012, about 1.7 million records

Diagnoses